Core Diem: A Tasking Portfolio

If you’ve been following along since last October, you’ve probably seen a number of selections that seem to have been snake bite victims. The most recent injured stock is Infosys Tech (INFY) down some -21% this morning as the company admits that they’re tired of “lingering economic malaise.” We’ll be watching the 16-17 analysts who cover INFY to see if forecasts for 2013 and 2014 weaken materially in days ahead.

As I shared with Cy Lynch this morning, in honor of one of the best lines delivered by Ricardo Montalban (Khan) with respect to his adversary William Shatner (Captain Kirk) this portfolio TASKS ME

The outperformance accuracy of Core Diem is now 13% with a relative return of -11% after this morning’s carnage. (Cognizant Technology lost ground in sympathy with their industry peers at INFY.) Ugh.

But this condition is really nothing new — as Cy consistently and persistently reminds (as do Ken Kavula and Hugh McManus quite often) — TIME is not a 4-letter word. Our mettle is tested.

This current market surge is full of flaky stakes making new highs. As a case in point, today’s rage is Rite-Aid (RAD) with their quality ranking of ZERO as the stock price soars from $1.50 to $2.25. Nope, there’s no decimal place missing.

We’ll continue to add a stock per day to Core Diem going forward and look forward to the day when we celebrate a positive relative return.

Flake at will. We continue to believe that seeking high-quality companies when they’re comfortably in the sweet spot (our version of Graham’s margin of safety) is still a pretty good idea and that TIME is on our side.